Delinquents (Dusty #2) Read online

  DELINQUENTS (DUSTY #2)

  MARY ELIZABETH

  SARAH ELIZABETH

  Copyright © The Elizabeths, LLC.

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or authors. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or authors.

  Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein, the authors and publisher assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of information contained within.

  Cover Design: Arijana Karčić, Cover It! Designs

  Interior Design: E.M. Tippetts Book Designs

  Editor: The Polished Pen

  Proofreaders: Catherine Jones, Karin Kempert Lawson

  First Edition

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Mary’s Dedication:

  Sarah's Dedication:

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Mary’s Acknowledgements

  Sarah’s Acknowledgements

  About Mary

  About Sarah

  About the Book Designer

  For everyone who is or has ever been Dusty or Bliss.

  Love is knowing.

  For trouble, whose cup I tender as dearly as my own.

  I'm sorely acquainted with the hardships that come along with being Thomas' safe spot.

  Stretching out on my back, I slide my arms and legs between cool sheets that still smell illicitly sweet but bring no comfort. Wasted words and meager memories hold love's place around me, and I've given up on trying to sleep. Switching to my side, my restless eyes find red alarm clock numbers that are the only light in this room and torture to my heart.

  Every minute that passes is the new longest he's ever been gone.

  Three days.

  The late nights I used to spend here waiting for trouble to come home before sunup are nothing compared to now. I choose my battles with him, but one's never lasted this long, and the uncertainty, the disconnect and unending, unavoidable doubts that are starting to creep in—

  I close my eyes and focus on my heart, but it only makes me wonder how his is beating.

  It's not unusual for Thomas to spend two or three nights in a row out with his friends, especially during the summer, but this isn't that. I haven't seen him since our fight in the driveway Thursday night, and I haven't heard from him since Saturday.

  Come back, I texted.

  I've been clinging to soon since that afternoon. I thought he'd be home that night. I thought he'd stumble in and kiss me awake with lips that are drug-dry but more comforting than these sheets. I thought this was just another battle, another hardship, another wound that would scar but pale in the warmth of love returned, strengthened by enduring.

  But this meantime is stretching into oblivion.

  I go back and forth between scared and hurt and angry, but they all feel like falling. My stomach bottoms out every time my mind circles back to the same stress-thought I've carried since I was thirteen years old, and my pulse doesn't know what to do. It's too fast, too slow, too shallow, inconsistent and lost without Dusty's. My body's tired from anxiety straining through my limbs all day, and my head's a mess of constant replays, countless insecurities, and a thousand reasons to get out of this bed and never come back.

  Because, how do you do this to someone you love?

  He didn't like hearing me and Becka talk about California, but he knows I can't go anywhere without him. Love knows, but I turn my face into his pillow and fight tears.

  Because, what did I expect?

  This longing, this hidden inconsolability, heartbreaking with no clear end in sight, is who we are.

  It's who we've always been.

  I love a boy who can't get his shit together, but without him I can't breathe. Thomas is love to me, and this love runs deeper than my blood and stronger than my own sense of instinct and survival. This love is forever-bound.

  Pursing my lips, I exhale slowly, steadily emptying my lungs.

  I'm here.

  I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

  Why isn't he?

  I don't care where he's been or what he's done. I'll love bloody knuckles and a filthy conscience just as much as clear blue eyes and the warmest laugh. High as a kite or in tears on his knees, he can be gone as long as he's right here. I don't care.

  I just want him back.

  Pressing red-flannel-covered fingers to my lips, I dig for strength and assurance. I close my eyes and concentrate on breathing, slow and steady, but my inhale carries notes of vanilla and Tide that are far too cruel to be kind.

  Alone in Thomas' bed for the third night in a row, I hide my face under his blankets and cry.

  I can't help it.

  My alarm wakes me at 5:15.

  Glowing blue before-dawn light surrounds me.

  Love does not.

  Before my eyes even open, hurt hits me like a brick wall. A pattern that should be natural, struggles and a practice I now have to constantly measure out, takes over.

  Slowly, steadily, cautiously, I pull air through my nose. Sadness and frustration make oxygen feel like fire, but I take in a little more burning.

  Slow.

  Steady.

  My eyes burn behind my lids, heavy and harsh with the weight of abandonment. My chest pangs with panic and desperation, but I concentrate on careful breaths. It's all I let myself focus on.

  I don't think about how I wish the air filling my lungs was shared, tinted with Doublemint and true love instead of leftover smoke and fading soap. I don't think about what could be or should be. I don't even think he has to be okay, because I can't.

  Love has burned down to learning how to breathe.

  Over.

  And over.

  And over again.

  Reaching for my phone, I know before I look—

  Nothing.

  It's Monday morning.

  Thomas is still gone.

  And I have to go home today.

  Pushing blankets away and getting up, I swallow sadness. Resentment rises with sunlight that rubs salt into my wounded heart, and I throw his flannel back onto his bed.

  Come home, I text him, burying bitterness and blame between my lungs as I leave his room.

  Becka's on her stomach with her arms out when I open her door. Dirty bare feet stick out from her sheets and summer-sun-bleached blond is everywhere as she snores lightly. Ever the heaviest sleeper, she doesn't budge when I cra
wl in next to her, tug half of the twisted blankets over myself, or wrap my arms around her skinny middle. But when I pull her near and give a little squeeze that's meant to wake mascara-smudged sleeping beauty, she hums and wraps around me, too.

  Familiar-sweet between coconut-verbena soap and the scent of a weekend spent outside, she's best-friend safe and the closest thing to what I want most.

  “He texted me,” she says.

  I know by her dreamy smile she means Smitty.

  “While you were in the bathroom just now, he said he wants to see me.”

  Things have been sort of stilted, basically fucked-up since prom, and not just with Dusty. What happened with my best girl and his closest boy has been unforgettable for everyone. Oliver and Smitty came over Thursday night, but the two-ton elephant in the room didn't leave much space for making-up or carefree ease. We tossed quarters until drunkenness led to dramatics, and Smitty wasn't having it. Oliver was apologetic, but they left, and for days my girl's been all bitten-down fingernails, hiding her busted heart in reckless pink wheels and bruised elbows.

  But here and now, tangled close, I can feel how full of hope her strongest muscle is. She made a mistake, but she loves Smitty. He has to know that.

  “He has stuff to do with his dad this morning, but later,” she says, finally opening eyes that match her brother's.

  Forcing a smile, I hide my face in her neck.

  FALLING BACK asleep, we don't stir until there's a knock and Tommy's opening the door.

  “Rebecka, Bliss, I'm sorry,” she says, leaning against the frame.

  My sore eyes strain under the wall of waking, but I don't let suffering or frustration show.

  Sitting up, Becka rubs her face and I lean onto my arms. Late morning sunshine pours in around the edges of the Mexican blanket hanging in the window, lighting Tommy's nightgown with a harsh glow.

  “Have you heard from your brother?” Concern she's trying to cover with nonchalance comes through all too clearly.

  My heart cracks around a buried beat while my girl shakes her head.

  “Nope,” she says, sounding less sorry than annoyed.

  Tommy closes the door again, and Becka shakes out sleep-knotted hair.

  “He's such a dick.” She pulls a tie from her bracelet-covered wrist.

  I nod.

  Heading to her desk, she sits with a yawn and pulls beat-up and Band-Aided knees under her chin. The lines around her eyes give away thoughtfulness she doesn't share out loud, and when I sit up, she throws a paper plane made out of a detention slip at me.

  “Let's go to the beach,” she says.

  My hidden heart wants to stick around the house in case Thomas returns, but stronger spite outweighs teenage longing. Dusty's pushing me every minute he's gone, and what's he doing while I'm here covering hurt I'm not allowed to nurse and reminding myself how to breathe?

  What's more important than this?

  Let him come home and not find me.

  Let him know how much it kills to have to wonder.

  Bikinis on under shorts and tanks, we head to Agate Beach in Becka's new Jeep with a cooler full of fresh peaches, sunscreen, and all the beers it can hold. The sun shines June-noon brightly and the breeze swirls hot around us with pop music she turns all the way up.

  Monday morning makes it easy to find a spot for our cooler and blanket, but we don't lie down. We swim and float together in the summer-warm salt water. We're quiet for a long time and it's nice. Easy waves and sun rays calm in a way that cool, trouble-scented sheets don't and comforts me deeper than my best friend can. It almost feels good.

  “My parents are fucking crazy,” Becka says after a while, sliding her hands across the surface of the water and her thoughts through my reverie.

  “It's their fault, you know? That Dusty's so messed-up.”

  I listen.

  “He's being stupid, though,” she continues. “Petey doesn't even know where he is.”

  “You talked to Pete?” I ask, a feeling like jealousy winding around my exhausted nerves.

  “Yeah.” She shrugs. “It's whatever. I mean, it's Petey.”

  Her tone is warm and forgiving, and when I look over, her shoulders are slack and her face is worry-free.

  “You just get caught up sometimes,” she says, moving her arms through the water, closing and opening her hands. “Shit happens.”

  Mistakes in the sand aside, drunken apologies and confessions aside, this is Rebecka and the boy who always pushes her. There's naturally easy loyalty there that nothing else can compare to. It doesn't negate what she has with Smitty, but it also isn't going anywhere.

  Squinting my eyes against the sun, I look closer at my friend and catch a glimpse of uncertainty in the set of her lips that makes her look exactly seventeen.

  “They have a game Tuesday.” She glides onto her back. “He's not going to miss that.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  My girl dunks under the surface and I follow, physical burdens lifting as I dive. I chase the weightlessness for the few cool seconds I can hold my breath before coming back up, sparkling and soaked.

  On the shore, Becka's phone rings, and I recognize the chorus of “Down On The Corner” as Smitty's call.

  The swim back to the beach leaves me tired and dazed. I focus on the simultaneously cool and warm wind on my bare skin as I watch hopeful-hearted answer the one she betrayed, and everything between and around my bones aches. My stomach knots around sour envy, and there's tension in my limbs that's taxing to fight. My stupid heart beats yearning and worry, and it's not fair.

  I miss him so much and I can't have him no matter what. I have to hide all of it, and I'm fucking drained.

  “They'll be here in a little bit,” Becka says, tossing her phone to the blanket.

  We spread out our towels, and I fold a smaller one for my head, lying on my stomach while she relaxes on her back.

  Behind my sunglasses, between the sound of the waves, I measure my breathing. I draw circles in the sand in front of me and concentrate on tiny grains between my fingertips, listening to the seagulls call to each other while overtired tears swell behind my shades. I fixate on the sunburn spreading from my neck to my shoulders, down my back and legs, beating hotter with every minute. Worn out under ultraviolet heat and love's torture, my breaths shallow and slow down as I hold my tears back.

  I'm close to passing out when the sound of a car tugs my attention.

  Looking up, I find Oliver's old blue-and-white pickup. Dizziness and weight bear down on me as I sit up on my towel, and in my peripheral vision, Becka sits, too.

  Across from us, Oliver gets out first. With a sucker in the back corner of his mouth, he hooks his keys on his back belt loop and presses his hands casually into the front pockets of his jeans.

  All my weary muscles go weak. Standing tall and straight in suddenly clouded-over sunlight, the boy I know that wants to be more than friends looks like cool comfort: strong, effortless, and needed.

  Smitty opens the passenger door. The only one of us not wearing shades, he keeps his eyes on the ground as they walk toward us. Next to me, Becka's trying to hide it, but she's shifty in her want to be forgiven, just like her brother.

  “Go,” I prompt under my breath, impatiently combing my fingers through water-wavy, semi-dry hair.

  Black bikini-bottomed and hot pink-topped, suntanned and platinum blond leaves her clothes and everything else behind as she makes her way to the one with bare eyes. He doesn't unpocket his hands as they walk away together, but she keeps hers free as a white flag between them.

  Letting go of salty red-blond ends, I look at Oliver. He smiles as he walks toward me, and it's mercifully simple.

  “Hey,” he greets.

  “Hey,” I say back, and as he looks around, I notice it's grown gloomier. Behind him, the sky's full of oncoming dark, and beach air has thickened with humidity. There's a tinge of electricity in the breeze and it makes my skin prickle.

  “It's a few hour
s away, but there's a storm coming,” he says, the sucker stick still tucked between his back teeth, shifting as he speaks.

  I push all my hair over my shoulder as he nods toward the horizon.

  “Want to go for a drive?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  And it's the easiest thing I've done in three days.

  Dusting off, I leave my shorts and flip flops by my towel, but tug my white tank on over my baby blue two-piece as we walk to his Chevy. I hang back while Oliver opens my door, and the scent of bonfires and hot chocolate surrounds my senses as I get in. I breathe a little deeper as he gets in, storm-tinted air that smells sweet and clean coming with him, and it consoles my raw nerves.

  He sits down, and I feel as safe as I knew I would.

  It's a different kind of security than I have with love.

  This is total. Steady.

  Thomas would shield me with his life from anyone and anything, but he can't protect me from himself.

  The boy in the driver's seat, though, the one checking all his mirrors and buckling his seat belt before he turns the ignition, the boy with streaks of scarlet and white on his so-faded Levi's, with his eyes on East Coast art schools and his kind heart consistently wide open...

  This boy would never hurt me.

  Oliver's a lot of things, some similar to and some so the opposite of Thomas, but there's one thing he is most of all that my heart and soul never is:

  Dependable.

  Buckling my belt, too, I look over. Guitars and a 1960s harpsichord flow from the stereo as he starts the truck. Oliver keeps his eyes forward as he drives, and we don't go far, just a few minutes up to a higher spot where he backs into a row of spaces facing west, and from here, the storm is fully visible.

  It creeps up on me out of nowhere, but dark, over-weighted clouds roll our way like they've been building for days. Some of them are almost black and others are greenish-gray, and they're all filled to the brim with a current I can feel in the air.

  Leaving The Doors on, Oliver cuts the engine off, and I lean back as he does, crossing my bare legs.

  “So,” he starts, taking his sunglasses off and setting them on the dash. I push mine to the crown of my head. “Is Becka going to take him back?”